Latest Tokugawa Rankings
Who is currently the highest-ranking Tokugawa shogun, you ask? My money is on Ieyasu, but you cannot know for sure—while quite dead, the 15 Tokugawa rulers jockey endlessly for historical supremacy in the minds of the many people who will purchase this special Rekishido edition of the Weekly Asahi Mukku advertised on the front page of today’s Nikkei newspaper.
My morning routine when home is to wake up, maybe put on my gray old-man cardigan, walk downstairs serenaded by Miichan’s Lament™️, walk to the sofa atop which Miichan stands to pronounce greetings and thrust her tiny warm head into my hands for vigorous scratches, administer said scratches while vigilant against the wee bites Miichan administers when scratch ecstasy becomes too much, pick up Miichan and set her down on the floor, pour some pellets of food into Miichan’s bowl but get blocked by her insistent noshing head before I can pour a satisfactory amount, put away Miichan’s food container, patrol for Miichan vomits (if there are not zero then there are three), empty the dishwasher, boil water in the Balmuda pot (need to get this blog sponsored), place a paper filter in the metal filter, place the metal filter in the top mouth of the glass carafe, pour coffee beans from their container into the hand-crank grinder, turn the crank 200 times, unscrew the wooden lid and container portion of the grinder apart, pour the ground coffee into the paper filter, fetch the pot of now-boiling water, pour just enough to soak the coffee, wait 20 seconds or so while looking at my phone, pour with the smallest steady stream possible more hot water to cover each surface of ground beans evenly until the filter is around full, leave that to percolate while I go outside to fetch the Nikkei from the post box, take a breath of outside air, glare at any cars passing by too fast, go back inside, remove filters from the carafe, throw paper filter and grounds into the wet burnable waste bag, swish coffee around in the glass carafe to oxidate it a bit, pour the coffee from a slight height into the logoed thermos container a client gave me as swag, take a sip or two, screw on the lid, notice that Miichan is scratching the claw-sharpening cardboard scratcher thing, walk over to the table, sit down looking at the paper, notice that Miichan is chirping her customary three-to-five morning chirps atop the sofa, and read all the headlines, any articles of interest, and the stock prices of a few key clients in the Nikkei while sipping some pretty good coffee if I do say so myself.
But the advertisements on the bottom of the front page are always educational.
When I interpret company board meetings or otherwise witness interactions among the titans of corporate Japan, a common occurrence is that one of them will preface a statement with “as per the Nikkei.” Not “this morning I read in the Nikkei” or “Perhaps you saw in the Nikkei.” Statements are made with the matter-of-course conclusion that everyone has read the Nikkei.
From this observation I extrapolate that a certain percentage of the same titans are also into whatever content the front-page ads are hawking—almost always in book or other text form—and this perhaps tenuous assumption goes into my semiconscious calculus of how to interact with them.
Which is to say, I have a sneaking suspicion that knowing the latest Tokugawa rankings would benefit me in business. But I will resist the temptation to buy the advertised volume. Unless it appears in physical form somewhere I am shopping, and then fate will demand a purchase. And I cannot lie. The other features are as interesting or maybe even more interesting to me, particularly the five kaido and the statistical analysis of sankin kotai. Okay maybe I’ll check a bookstore today.
